May

UCLA Luskin students and faculty gathered Thursday to celebrate one of the school's signature attributes: UCLA Luskin’s Annual Fellowship Reception to honor donors and celebrate the achievements of more than 100 fellowship students.
At a reception drawing more than 100 guests, students mingled with donors – including the school's benefactors, Meyer and Renee Luskin – and shared stories of their achievements and scholarly ambitions.

L.A. City Controller and UCLA alumna Wendy Greuel will address graduating students in social welfare, urban planning and public policy at UCLA Luskin's 2012 Commencement Ceremony.
In announcing the event, Dean Frank Gilliam, Jr., called Greuel "a champion for public policy issues including public health initiatives, school reform programs, crime reduction measures, public transportation, and efforts to rebuild the city’s infrastructure."

Brian Taylor, director of the Institute of Transportation Studies at the Lewis Center and a professor of Urban Planning, was featured prominently in a UCLA Today story on what has come to be known as "The Rampture" -- major reconstruction of on- and off-ramps at Wilshire Boulevard and the 405 Freeway.

A UCLA urban planning professor who devises strategies to turn characterless, unappealing urban streets and sidewalks into inviting, pedestrian-friendly environments is hoping to bring downtown L.A. its first active-recreation parklet.A parklet — a micro-park created along urban streets from underutilized strips of roadway, on-street parking spaces and traffic triangles — can be as simple as a wooden platform, built over three parking spaces, on which umbrella tables, chairs and planters suddenly appear.

April

The UCLA MURP Program has just been granted re-accreditation for seven years -- the maximum term possible -- in recognition of our "exemplary record." The MURP program is now accredited
through December 31, 2019.

If it is built, the proposed 72,000-seat Farmers Field stadium in downtown
Los Angeles will bring many benefits but also major traffic congestion. Despite
an optimistic estimate that 20% of patrons will ride public transit on a
weekday, and 15% on weekends, the project's environmental impact report says
almost 20,000 cars will also arrive for events there.

UCLA political ecologist Susanna Hecht has spent 30 years studying Amazon rainforest settlements or quilombos, making frequent trips to visit these areas where residents have shown her how they farm, fish, hunt and gather in a way that maintains the forest. While some environmentalists fret that Brazil’s quilombos could thwart efforts to preserve the Amazon rainforest — Hecht argues that the villagers are actually vital caretakers of the forest.

What does sustainability look like on the ground? Just how sustainable can a city, or a neighborhood be? This quarter Walker Wells and Ted Bardacke are working with a group of
Urban Planning students (in UP 269 Green Urban Studio - Designing Living Neighborhoods) in an attempt to answer these fundamental questions. The objective of the course is to develop a proposal for the redesign of a Los Angeles neighborhood that achieves a high level of sustainability.

Gary Orfield, UCLA distinguished professor of
education, law, political science and urban planning, has been selected as one
of the 2012 winners of the Dr. John Hope Franklin Award for his achievements as
an advocate for racial equality in education, including his work with the Civil
Rights Project/Proyecto Derechos Civiles (CRP) at UCLA. For the complete story seethe article in UCLA Today